The JaffeBLEND Blog

Women in Marketing Awards 2013

Last night at the prestigious Haymarket Hotel, women from all over the UK gathered together to celebrate achievements in Marketing at the Women in Marketing Awards.

I was honoured to receive Highly Commended in the "Best Female Marketer - Independent Consultant" category.

The evening began with cocktails and canapes, while guests mingled in the stunning venue. We then headed downstairs to perch above a covered swimming pool for the event itself. Ade Onilude, the Awards Creator, welcomed everyone in the appropriately named "Pool Room". She then handed over to Daryl Fielding, Brand Director, Vodafone, who showed us how successful women like herself are humble since she was astonished she was given the current job at Vodafone.

Then onto the awards themselves, where I was elated to receive recognition in my category. It's moments like these that I am so grateful to the tremendous support I've had over the years from special ex-colleagues, clients and friends (who even came to this event). If I could have done a speech, I would have thanked this crazy technology called "The Internet" since it has totally reinvented marketing (though not everyone would agree with me on that point - give it time).

Other esteemed women in marketing were also honoured, like Karen Blackett, CEO Mediacom, and Roisin Donnelly, Head of Marketing, P&G. Karen was thanked by none other than my mentor, Sir Martin Sorrel, via a special video message.

We heard back about the charities that the awards support, and of particular interest is a youth charity called One Young World bringing inspirational youth and potential leaders together from 168 countries together! A young Google Zeitgeist event, it seems.

More drinks, canapes and goodie bags later, we departed into the cool London night having had some fruitful discussions, seeing old faces and making new acquaintances.

Thank you Ade and CIM for the tremendous honour. This award means so much to me as marketing has pulsed through my veins from a very young age. 20 years ago sitting in marketing lectures in South Africa, I never imagined receiving recognition like this, in the city of London, by the Chartered Institute of Marketing and most notably among such esteemed and impressive other women.

P&G. The full list of winners can be found here.

Google Zeitgeist 2013: Rethink. Reset.

After yet another splendid welcome reception, filled with flavoured popcorn ranging from Madras curry to Espresso caramel, we all settled in for Zeitgeist 2013. This is my 4th Zeitgeist and it remains a highlight in my year due to the exceptional speakers, attendees, content and entertainment. The highlight was getting to try Google Glass. I have lots of thoughts on this, but that will be saved for another blog post!

My day began with a run around the beautiful Grove golf course, culminating in a stretching session outside the reception while Sir Martin Sorrel was being interviewed on camera next to me. Not exactly the typical start to one's day! Below is my not-so-short summary, which is tribute to the level of interesting content coupled with my inability to describe this event in 1 single paragraph. Furthermore, if you attended this event, you may notice how much I've left out! That's the beauty of blogging, you can just skim or skip to the parts you find most interesting. 

Nikesh Arora (@nikesharora), the Chief Business Officer and SVP Google, introduced the theme of Rethink and Reset. According to Bloomberg, Nikesh earned a meagre $51 million in fiscal year 2012.

He also introduced the crazy challenge to wear casual clothing for day 2 which most participants simply couldn't comply with (myself included).

I can honestly say that as a result of attending, I did actually rethink and reset during this conference. Well done and thank you Google, for pulling off a spectacular event yet again.

The overall content of Zeitgeist was top notch with a good mixture of intriguing and thought provoking speakers ranging from politicians to robots. I did not take notes for the entire event but was actively tweeting, with some appreciated retweets like from @nikesharora. 

Action This Day

The first speaker of the day was Frans Timmermans, the Dutch Foreign minister, who kicked off with a superb un-Dutch accent on the topic of the EU. He talks about the historic blame culture and how the EU is now the target of blame for all problems which simply isn't right. Context is now key so while it may be legal to evade taxes, is it moral? A really interesting point given the grilling Google received about their low tax contribution in the UK this week. Despite all the EU turbulence, he highlighted that we have never seen so much peace and stability in Europe in history!  He talked about the fact that for the first time our children's future may be worse than ours. He ended with the quote "If we die. We die. But first, we live". 

Prof Michael Sandel then spoke on the topic of the shift from a market economy to a market society where a value is given to almost every aspect of life. Look at linestanding.com, where you can buy your way to front of room (I wish that was around when I queued for hours at Peppa Pig World last weekend!). You can buy a prison cell room upgrade for $90. Many US schools have tried to motivate kids with cash incentives to study/get good grades/read a book. A lively discussion ensued whether it was good or bad to financially incentivise education. Michael then revealed that the system actually didn't work and there is a concern that money can drown out the intrinsic love of learning. Interestingly, the kids who were paid for reading books, actually did read the books though they did land up choosing shorter books. ;-) I personally think the truth lies somewhere in the middle i.e. sometimes an incentive (financial or otherwise) is the best method for results and it can catalyse new behaviours. 'Marketising' everything means that people increasingly live separate lives and is not good for democracy. 

Eric Schmiedt talks about his book a The New Digital Age. He feels that we are not optimistic enough! Chrome is now the number 1 browser for speed, price and security whereas Android has had 900 million activations and is installed on a billion smartphones. This shows the scale of demand for services and platforms that solve problems. The Internet is pivotal to impact society positively even as far reaching as empowering individuals in North Korea or warring tribes in Sudan vs. South Sudan (the latter who currently use micro SD cards as means of sharing information). There are no countries where the arrival of the Internet has made things worse. Mobile devices take this further.

The Pleasure Principle

"Money can buy happiness and if you think it can't, you're just not spending it right" purports Michael Norton, Neuroscientist. He showed how winning the lottery often ruins people's lives because mainly when we think about having money we think about buying stuff for ourselves. So what if we asked people to shift the spending on others to see if they were happier? He showed us the results of various experiments across different countries showing that while the amount of money didn't matter ($5 vs $20) but does matter to your happiness whether or not you spent it on someone else. So basically you should try giving some money away! 

Even more interesting from the perspective of organisations is that the team dynamic changes from prosocial behaviour i.e. teams helping one another. Prosocial behaviour benefits the organisation 5x more due to sharing  - very significant when preparing bonus schemes. 

Paul Bloom, author of "How Pleasure Works", talked about the strange paradox of pleasure and how your pleasure is effected by your beliefs. E.g. golf clubs, gum and shoes may be meaningless however when you find their previous owners or origins, the pleasure changes i.e. golf clubs (owned by JFK), gum (by Britney Spears) and shoes (thrown at Bush). He showed an interesting sweater example of one owned by George Clooney vs. Bernie Madoff. Forbidden the owner to boast or resell reduces the price but washing decreases (Clooney) or increases (Madoff). 

Why aren't we happier now? There is enormous choice and little or no effort. This is the current paradox of choice: too much choice makes you miserable. Self-binding is the only solution to the paradox of pleasure e.g. Staying faithful or losing weight. 

David Halpern, Director of Behavioural Insights Team for UK Government, then gave his perspective. The insights help the government in a variety of ways to affect behaviour e.g. it can help increase those paying tax on time by adding to a letter that others in their area pay on time and you are one of the few who don't! They try get people to think about what they can do and not can't. 

I'm very pleasantly surprised to learn that the UK government employs this intelligent approach and it no doubt delivers great results both for the government and the people. 

Matthieu Ricard showed us that meditation increases happiness. Matthieu is a Buddhist monk and author of "The Art of happiness". 

The session ended with Apollo Robbins, Experience Designer according to the agenda but basically performing as an illusionist-come-pickpocket.. He magically manages to pickpocket a member of the audience and then explains the insights. It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see - Thoreau. His tricks use visual, verbal and spatial elements. Space is social, then personal then intimate. Our reality is really built on faulty perception tools. It's fascinating how illusion plays on how the brain functions. 

Courage in a Connected World

Marc Goodman, Futurist at FBI. Criminals are also entrepreneurs e.g. when the train was invented, criminals simply discovered train robbery. With the Internet, 100 million Sony play station accounts were compromised. This is the asymmetric nature of the threat. There was recently a criminal flash mob who managed to take $45 m from ATM's. 

On a very scary note, new technology is creating new forms of crime e.g. 3D printing is allowing for 3D weapons, making arms control futile. Global security paradigms don't work in this new connected world. 

Lindiwe Mazibuko, leader Official Opposition Party for South Africa spoke eloquently about her path to becoming party leader at the age of 33. She was inspirational in her confidence and intelligence. Despite challenges received for being black, female, single and young. I can certainly relate on some of those points and take my hat off to her. She said that she actually revels in the criticism she receives as it confirms that she is relevant.

Toomas Ilves, President of the Republic of Estonia, spoke about his initiative to connect all Estonian schools online. He showed how leadership and vision can leverage ICT to help a country leap forward. 

Pakistan former president, Shaukat Aziz, spoke humbly about his experience going from banking to politics driven by a pure love for his country. Taking no sick or vacation days for many years, he survived an assassination bombing to deliver impressive economic growth. 

Finally Moran Cerf, a neuroscientist who hilariously told his story from being a hacker and prisoner in the Israeli army (for hacking) to executing a real bank robbery as part of his security company. This session got a whole lot of laughs and is worth a watch (see link to YouTube channel at the end of this post).

Our Legacy

Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Liberian peace activist, was another impressive speaker. Mother to 6 kids, former alcoholic and abused wife, she managed to play a key role in the end to Liberia's 14-year war. She smartly organised a 'sex-abstinence' protest for example, which naturally got significant media attention. This powerful and relatable woman was inspiring in showing how everyone can make a difference, no matter who you are and no matter how big or small as she told a story how she helped a young girl who was bullied. She highlighted that there is good out there, though we tend to only hear about the bad. A real problem as a result of today's media in my opinion. This is the kind of leadership and inspiration which will ignite the next generation of those who will affect change. 

Bianca Jagger spoke about her dedicated work over the last 3 decades to help 'most vulnerable members of society'. I was totally unaware of her work in campaigning for everything from human rights to environmental protection throughout the world. 

Day 1 ended with the cocktail reception and evening event in a beautifully clad venue made to resemble a magical indoor tropical jungle, complete with trees! There were amazing performances from a YouTube contemporary dance violinist, Jessie J (!) and 2 cellists who were simply phenomenal to watch (doing everything from Coldplay to U2 on the cello!). Here's a small clip of the performance. All this took place while we consumed homemade fudge and exotic Elderflower cocktails. 

Day 2 started with an interesting topic on education entitled Generation Tomorrow.

Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, showed us the results of his experiments in India and the UK around 'minimally invasive education' (MIE) which involved placing a computer in a slum and asking key questions. Essentially the days of researching via the encyclopaedia Britannica are now repeated using a PC (and Google!). This has interesting implications for teaching and the experiment has been repeated successfully. 

Eddie Obeng, from the virtual Business School, energetically grabbed our attention in a humorous engaging style to show us the steps he uses to gain the attention of an audience. He humorously showed how organisations can squash innovation purely through hierarchical structure i.e. you start at the bottom but have an illusion you are moving up when new people come into the organisation beneath you except the organisation is basically just growing underneath you and the people at the top, well "none of you are going anywhere, now are you". 

Jack Andraka, a 15 year Glee fan, talked about how he came to develop a new diagnostic test for pancreatic cancer (!). After reading a multitude of articles online which didn't make sense, eventually things started to click into place. An interesting connection to Sugata Mitra's conclusions on learning. Naomi Shah, the 17 year Google Science Fair winner, talked about her development of a bio filter for respiratory disorders. Her research started at the age of 11 and involved cold-calling universities. She has developed a mathematical model and interactive app to quantify the impact of harmful pollutants. Both of these kids were just inspiring to see and I'm really grateful to be made aware of such greatness in today's youth.

The Way We Live

I really enjoyed this session, especially the profound mixture of humility with creative inspiration in the presenters since their work has improved and impacted the lives of so many.

Thomas Heatherwick designed the 2012 London Olympic cauldron by making it something collaborative between the participants and spectators which is different to just being a "bowl and a stick". Whilst it was not meant to having moving parts (and ended up with 220 petals representing the different countries), it was made from copper (as the gold, silver and bronze production was 'rather busy at the time'). The result was simply magnificent and a cauldron which was so much more. Thomas also talked about a design in Singapore for a university building with 'no corners' and the new London bus combining and old icon with new design built for greater efficiency taking considerations into account like seat fabric which disguises dirt and stains since they are only cleaned once daily. 

 

Scott Harrison, former nightclub promoter and now founder of Charity: Water, spoke about the reinvention of charity with his 100% model (100% of the charity gets used, the organisation is funded separately to the charity fundraising). Using GPS, givers can see exactly where they are helping, thereby providing greater transparency. He has already brought water to > 3 million people with more ambitious goals. I really liked his "give up your birthday" initiative encouraging people to donate the amount of their age. 

Alastair Parvin, Co-founder of Wikihouse, showed us how he designed a DIY house made possible with 3D printing, not requiring any tools. The parts wedge together and even the mallet is printed with the parts. This has massive implications for third world or developing countries and I hope this will reach South Africa which still has shanty towns using cardboard, plastic bags and corrugated iron. 

From Star Trek to Zeitgeist 

The final session of Zeitgeist took the conference from the commercial to the scientific in a session moderated by David Rowan (Wired Magazine). Rich Walker and Bertold Meyer kicked off with a freakish man made purely from artificial organs. The sheer sophistication of modern medicine is evident when you realise that every part of the body, even the skin, can be replicated for medical purposes. Prosthetics and robotics have developed to a level where a limb is amputated in favour of a more functional prosthetic. Bertold's 360 degree wrist swivel (his party trick) shows us that artificial limbs (or bionic limbs if you will) can do even more than their real predecessors.  

There may be a point where artificial parts a better than healthy people so a musician could always have a cochlear implant. 

Reality is that this is still niche, and while Bertold got his bionic hand funded in Switzerland, 14 year old was denied the same thing on the NHS (generally costing around $60k), he resorted to offering advertising for formula 1 Mercedes on his prosthetic arm. Bertold's current hand has 24 grips controlled by an app (which is presently completely hackable!). 

Also amazing to see is the fact that the hand is transparent not flesh-coloured, looking more like a gadget than something for the disabled, so gives the wearer more confidence. 

Walter de Brouwer. CEO, Scanadu, told us how his son suffered brain trauma, he analysed all the numbers and even hired doctors as information consultants.  Decided to put that in a company and give them all the numbers. He has created a real life Tricorder (the device in Star Trek used by Dr. Spock for instant diagnoses). The Scanadu scout sells for $149 (£99) - and carries all vital signs. Walter believes that medicine will disappear i.e. preventation will be ubiquitous. This is a topic I'm personally very passionate about so it's very exciting to see the technological progress in the medical field in the area of prevention. 

Walter's big concept is this: our bodies are data and we can change it! Quantification is the end of nature and the beginning of engineering.

Dr. Jakob van Zyl, Associate Director at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, spoke to us in a quasi-South African/American accent about his robotic investigations looking for life on other planets. He showed us the roving chemical laboratory which travelled several months 800 M km to Mars. This is when you know that your current job just isn't cool enough. It was intriguing to realise how far the investigations have gone to identify that there in fact are factors showing potential presence of life on other planets! Cue X-files music please. 

Then Shin Kubota from Japan, with translator, spoke about his research into the immortality of jellyfish. A fascinating topic and amusing to see David Rowan keep a straight face when talking about his 19 songs released about ... jellyfish. 8 of these can be sung in Karaoke bars around Japan. 

The final session of the day was by Astro Teller, the so-called Captain of Moonshots at Google, who spoke to use about the process and mindset to develop moonshots. How uncanny that the head of moonshots has a name like that! The first question from the audience related to the picture in the background, and it turns out this is an elevator into space, the picture representing this division. He did inform us reasons why this isn't actually feasible (yet) though pretty inspiring to know that the topic was even addressed on a serious level!

A highlights video clip gives a good flavour of the event and full sessions clips can be viewed of course on YouTube at www.zeitgeistminds.com.

Twitter stream can be viewed on hashtag #zeitgeist13.

Europe Adweek Day 2: #aweurope

After racing from the tube at lightning speed for a coffee at Costa, the first dilemma of the day was this: how does one consume a boiling coffee in record time as no external food & drink allowed in the venue?  

Matt Shepherd, MD AdWeek introduced the first session, the Evening standard CEO summit. Moderated by Gideon Spanier.

Stewart Esterbrook, MD Starcom Mediavest

• We talk about ourselves as a human experience company and that's the value we bring to the table in understanding consumers
  • Agencies have allowed transaction to be the centre of gravity in the past but Starcom are shifting that to more added value conversation by building rounded engaging experience for consumers 
  • We are not device led but rather look at seamless experiences marrying content and context
  • Key to keeping talent is to develop people, show progress and create winning culture (as everyone wants to be on a winning team)

Arnaud de Puyfontaine, CEO Hearst UK

• What keeps me awake at night?

1. Leadership and people keeps me awake at night
2. Agility and pace of change is a concern but opportunity
3. Absolute obsession with customer knowledge and data

• There is no demise of print but a complete overhaul. They recently launched a new publication achieving 100,000 circulation.
  • Keep talent by helping people believe they are building the future

Dave Gwozdz, CEO Mojiva

Biggest concern is looking for talent but also retaining talent is key. Constantly looking to nurture talent pool as people often picked up by Facebook and Google. 

• Mobile ads don't make you cry and its a challenge to figure it out
  • If you don't think you are doing the most exciting thing possible, you should leave 

Matthew Dearden, CEO Clearchannel

• Core leadership responsibility is to create possibility of potential in a flatline economy
  • Shift from a real estate business to audience business
  • I believe the future of the Internet is mobile and we have NFC enabled sites
  • We even had ads with realtime data feeds
  • When digital adds value you can justify charging a premium
  • For extra £1 spent on advertising you get £6 GDP growth so would encourage more spending on advertising to grow the economy
  • Keep people by giving people jobs they love

Dan Clays, MD OMD

• Culture is so important that they have just appointment director of culture. Need a culture of innovation running through r whole business and also emphasis on knowledge share. 

Next up is the Wired Global Conversation with an impressive line-up. This was definitely the best presentation of the day for me, personally. The panel included Rupert Turnbull, publisher of Wired, Bob Greenberg (R/GA), Sir John Hegarty (BBH), Jon Kamen (CEO Radical Media), Steve King (CEO Zenith) and Simon Rees (CEO DCM - Digital Cinema Media).

75% of Europe in 2015 will have smartphones. What are the challenges?

• Marketing on mobile is in its infancy (Bob Greenberg) and refers to Jeff Bezos (Amazon) saying the Internet is in its infancy! The desktop and laptop are shifting to mobile and, combined with GPS, larger screen and voice activation will create tremendous growth though we still don't know what advertising and marketing look like on mobile
• Sir John says the product we produce is getting worse (or at least people seem to think so) - the elephant in the room! There is always a creative deficit with new technology though we are only beginning to work out a roadmap which will take longer. We don't know where advertising fits.
• Jon also says we are in an interesting point of disruption which will change our business forever 
• Steve says that mobile and multi-screen consumption is NOT the biggest change. There is a multiple of 20 in the disconnect between time spent on mobile and advertising (because the format hasn't been worked out yet). Definitely have not yet worked out how to make engaging relationships with consumers. 
• Simon informs us of the stat that Facebook more consumed via mobile than pc. 
• Bob: you can't separate mobile from social 

How are going to foster the next gen of creative talent? 

• Sir John says we have a dysfunctional government with a disaster education minister who wants to remove a creative education (giving ability to cv don't the future). Real problem in teaching kids about creativity. Governments are run by words!
• Steve King has 5 kids and sees technology as an innate social accelerator as his kids all are producing amazing creativity 
• Bob and Sir John sit on the board at Brand Centre where there is a creative technology track. New role: Creative Technologist

What about data?

Steve King talks about the terabytes of data which advertisers have. What do you do with all this data? We can improve the efficiency and efficacy of our communication. But 2/3 of consumers are concerned about privacy though a different 2/3 want relevant ads. Zenith are working with clients at how to use this data. Simon (DCM) worried about data and specifically, how data is interpreted. Cautious about a completely data led solution. 

Can advertising change behaviour?

Bob: Nike have seen they can change behaviour e.g. fuelband (I've done that!). Nike working on data visualisation - this is a creative way developing when applied to a live event with sports. Sir John objects and doesn't want people to know all this. He expects a huge backlash as this involves taking away freedom. "I don't understand myself sometimes - why are these companies saying we understand you?!?"

Other points:

• 400 M actively blogging in China showing desire for self-expression and we should do whatever we can to protect freedom of speech and editors. 
• Advertising must have trust and authenticity. We've lost trust in banks and supermarkets. A different approach is needed and Facebook says only 3% of advertisers "get it" - content needs to be rich, engaging, truthful and honest (Steve King). 

Next up was Microsoft, my old employer, handing out "cookies" (or shall we say 'biscuits' as this is a European conference) to attendees just as the session kicked off as a tongue-in-cheek salute to the whole internet explorer cookie controversy (which remained the elephant in the room). Andy Hart (newly promoted VP Europe) and Dave Coplin (Chief Envisioning officer) took to the stage for the MSFT Advertising session on Re-imagining Digital Advertising. This was an abstract session telling us how the world is changing and then giving us a peak in the kitchen of Microsoft Research with some super cool innovative products for the near future.

• Our attention spans are getting shorter as we look to our phones, phablets, tablets etc. to cut through 
• We get shown 1009 messages a day (PWC/IAB study, Eye blaster/Mediamind)
• Technology is about enabling humans to be better at what they do
• Qwerty design is 142 years old designed to slow typing to avoid keys jamming- behind the core of these devices
• A video was then shown of Microsoft Research (who design technology 10 years out). In the future every single surface will be able to display 2-way transmission. We saw Xbox technology showing the entire room illuminating and making the room part of the game.
• Smart glass connects Xbox to your mobile device – essentially making 2 devices aware of each other, e.g. phone showing map through the supermarket with special offers
• Smart phones are rather stupid given that they know what you are doing next (calendar), who your friends are etc. and yet relying on you to push a button 
• Context is everything: emotional, social, environmental, external
• Big data will change humanity (nah, that hyperbole isn't big enough!)
• Consumers feel violated in Creepy Valley: there was company who knew a man's teenage daughter was pregnant before he did
• We need to launch "Invitational Marketing" i.e. consumers inviting your brands into their lives to share experiences and messages which will enhance their lives (though you must understand their context, lean in or lean back). Ads should be beautiful, useful and relevant. 

Despite being early, the room was already jam-packed for Programmatic Buying: A win-win for Agencies, Advertisers & Publishers. One angry attendee who was refused entry proclaimed "How could they have such a small venue for such an important topic?!" This session was presented by Powerlinks Media (Mike Harty, Co-founder & COO).

Topic 1: What is driving prices down?

Dan Shaw (ITG)

• Very difficult justifying advertisers paying a premium for data. 90-95% data is questionable which creates question mark about the 5% which is good. Premium doesn't justify the cost. 
  • Seeing more clients asking to be on white list of 1000, 50 or 10 sites because context is so important. Want to be more insightful or targeted and willing to pay a premium.

Harvey Sariant (RadiumOne)

• First party data is so important and publishers sitting on so much. How can they build segments for reading?
  • White lists are only about trust and brand safety 

Topic 2: Audience vs, Context ... Where is the scale? How can we standardise, achieve scale while reaching in niche environments (500 ads seen by each user every day)?

• Good progress in getting publishers to stop competing and start collaborating 
• Clients and planners still want larger formats - data is a hot topic but it's not where the money is being spent currently. Need measurement (the right measurement) and KPI's for it to mature. 
• MWhat is digital these days? We need a cross-platform metric (eg. viewability) across all devices

Is the age of below-the-fold dead? Yes

Seeing more clients talking about viewability from a DR perspective instead of chasing the last click to help the industry move forward. We need trade bodies to start taking the lead to help publishers. We need a way to only render an ad on the page when the page is viewed.

Topic 3: Complete Data; a pipe dream? Valuing an impression the moment of the cookie drop

• WPP changed their terms allowing them to collect data as they seem fit (IDG)
• Can we overtarget through programmatic buying? There is a temptation. 

Topic 4: Delivering for Brand Advertising 

• We need a new set of metrics which is standardised
• 55% of marketers interviewed by Digiday said that online metrics should be aligned to offline
• Clients know that TV performs well and they are comfortable with it

Topic 5: High Impact Ad Delivery and Creativity: Click-through rates are decreasing and creative agencies are becoming disassociated with the digital space. What do we think? 

• Skyscrapers and MPU's are our bread and butter
• We need to find ways at bringing creative agencies back to the table
• Can we loop back to the creative agencies? 
• Need for collaboration and measurement 
• Viewability would involve serving ads in real time (IAB guideline says 50% of an ad should be viewable for at least 1 second) 
• It's not just the agencies - clients are starting to ask questions 
• There are free tools for publishers to show what is and isn't viewable and it's not so scary
• Nobody wants the conversation "have u been serving non viewable ads?"

The final session of the day for me was a panel titled The consumer has changed but has marketing? I unfortunately had to go to other meetings so missed other sessions I would have liked but luckily the conference is streamed and on video This panel consisted of Rupert Staines (MD RadiumOne) , Mark Creighton (CEO Mindshare), Kelaine Blades (7digital), Jennifer Roebuck (French Connection) and Nick Ellsom (founder Fast Thinking)

• Kelaine: your smartphone is your remote control to life, it's timely, relevant and personal but how do we integrate it across everything?
• Nick: marketing is reactive and requires infrastructure
• Jennifer: it's operationally almost impossible to keep up – "digifrenia" is about consumers feeling overwhelmed even at the current pace (so it's not just marketers feeling overwhelmed)
  • Kelaine: you can't even use the same message across the big 3
  • Rupert: Brands don't lag behind, it's the people behind the brands who lag. Simply not enough attention at high levels in the company to address the changes consumers are going through. Companies are suffering inertia and we are still operating around an antiquated structure. Every company without data at its core will not understand its customer base. 
  • Mark: disagrees with Rupert - it's about structure (moving deck chairs on the Titanic). It's always going to be disruptive. We are just about to create seamless transfer between devices and get connected TV's!
  • Rupert: It's a real challenge as there are a lot of companies (see Lumascape) doing a piece of the puzzle
  • Mark: Many aspects are really difficult to articulate to clients e.g. Appnexus and RTB
  • Nick: Lots of DR spend and not brand spend because its measurable
  • Rupert: Nonsense that all value still attributed to last click
  • Digital gives smaller brands a chance to rise to the top
  • Nike have commercialised "I Am Player" by selling virtual boots so there is a huge opportunity for brands
  • Mark: Developed a game for Kleenex called sneeze man. Brands can step in and help small developers who cannot afford the App Store 

So after 5 hours of listening and typing furiously on my Ipad Mini, that was the end of the day for me. Lots of common themes and issues have emerged and I'll be publishing these after Adweek has ended. In the meantime, enjoy the little summaries with nuggets I'm providing. All feedback welcome. Let me know if there are sessions over the next 2 days you think I should attend. I have meetings tomorrow but should get a good chunk of sessions again in the afternoon.

 

Google Think Branding 2013 Event

At the Royal Opera House on a freezing Tuesday (today), Google held their annual Think Branding event #thinkbranding2013. This conference was almost entirely focussed on YouTube with several interesting speakers and examples. Below is a short summary of the seminar. Apologies where the summary is thin – I was listening more than typing. The full seminar will be available online, on YouTube of course!

After a welcome by Shuvo Saha (Industry Director Branding), Matt Brittin (VP Northern and Central Europe) kicked off on the topic of Remastering Marketing talking about the T-Mobile flash mob at Liverpool street station which was then also shown on TV in the form of an ad directing everyone to YouTube (and generating 18 M YouTube views and started 18 Facebook pages). This was 4 years ago so the big question was "how much has changed 4 years later?"

The 3 themes for this event were:

1. Reframing Brands (e.g. Band-Aid think bigger using an app that recognises Muppet character on a plaster and makes a dancing character)
2. Reimagining  Media (e.g. Pizza delivery giving physical app for fridge, GoPro cameras marketed by customers on YouTube 240 M times sharing their videos, Oreos at Superbowl tweeting " you can still dunk in the dark" with 14 M retweets)
3. Rebooting Organisations 

PART 1: Reframing Brands

Connie Kalcher, VP Marketing & Consumer Experiences, Lego

• Lego means play well (2 Danish words)
• There are also interesting partnerships e.g. with Star Wars 
• Lego facilitates conversations and segments customers according to affinity with brand. They see the power to get advocates to flip content and be brand ambassadors. 
• Launched Mindstorms "robotic invention" for adults which was hacked. What do you do when your customers hack your products?
• Fans share a lot on social media - see Star Wars cantina on YouTube. I searched and found a range of clips – this is the one with lego.
• Created a site called "We Brick" tagging all the content on fan sites to be a platform for them to shine. Adult Fans of Lego (AFOLS) have events attended by 9 M people a year. 
• An architect's idea formed a new Lego product for adults. They have Lego Certified professionals who are licensed to do business off the back of the Lego brand. 
• What about the kids? 40 M views on Lego channel on YouTube as part of 360 degree approach. Lego has become an experience brand! 

James Hilton, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer, AKQA

• James introduced some key principles in the digital world. For starters, take the pain away! Make it simple! E.g. "Silver car" only have 1 car - silver Audi a4, Disney created the magic band so parents aren't continually opening up their wallets every few minutes at the Theme park.
• Disrupt or be disrupted. 
• Democratise what is for the elite and give power to the people. E.g. NHS, Google democratised data, Nike personal trainer in their pocket
• Help people be better e.g. Building Lego
• How? Start with vision.
• James gave some great examples of how brands reframe themselves. 
  • Nike Kinect training making it a habitual part of people's lives
  • Delta with bag scanning, airport navigation. It's not just about getting people on planes but helping them. The future of in flight entertainment (IFO) on iPhones and tablets. Went not just from pre-flight to inflight giving access to inboard wifi e.g. Glass bottom aircraft allows you to see where you are flying over, which friends of yours have been there, interesting facts etc.

PART 2: Reimagining Media

Dan Cobley, MD UK & Ireland, Google

• Dan introduced this part by talking more about video. 45% of online video watched on smartphone sand tables.
• The distinction between content and advertising Is blurred.

• There are 3 implications:

1. Type of context is changing
2. Measure for success is changing
3. Consumer insights and media planning is changing

Derek Scobie: Head of Propositions, YouTube

• An entertaining speaker, Derek talked about the content you currently get from YouTube vs. what you expect vs. what you will get to see
• YouTube's unpredictability is a challenge with lots of UGC (what you currently get) whereas YouTube wants to be more broadcast, professional and controlled (Note: BBC has more views on YouTube than on iPlayer!)
• Very interesting to learn that new original for YouTube content being made. E.g. Fast and furious, earth unplugged, fas#tag, Jamie's Food Tube. This leverages content from professionals with YouTube super users! E.g. The Daily mix made by 9 top beauty stars in YouTube (> 1 million views) with professional production company. This is the new YouTube. 

Bernardo Correia: Industry Head, Google UK

• How can you use data for brands to make successful content?
• I was interested to learn that the ideal content strategy should contain both "Hero" content and "Hygiene" content (see below)
• Content metrics should look at how much a video is loved and therefore create huge sharing social multiplier. 

Stuart Sullivan-Martin: Chief Strategy Office, MEC

• The magic for brands lies in the intersection between technology, media and psychology
• Data can sometimes be the currency of the marketing idea. E.g. Nike Auction site and Nike Zombie Run fitness app
• Searches for healthcare words gives insights
  

Part 3: Re-booting organisations

Andy Bird, Co-Founder and Exec. Director, Brand Learning

• There are barriers to digital are there and we need to shift the mindset - we need to embrace the new mindset and play to win! 
• We need to move from the relatively stable position to an agile position used to constant change

Paul Randle, Global Head of Digital, Akzo Nobel

• World's largest paint company, owner of Dulux, is on a corporate journey to go from being a chemicals company to being a paint company to being a decorative company
• There is a phenomenal amount of decorative conversation going on in the online world
• They started by conducting an audit: where are our customers, what are the conversations etc. and found that things were not good
• Paul found that he spent more in a year at Starbucks than the company spent on search!
• He also learnt that 0.9 FTE doing work with 2.5 agencies so he realised they had no control and decided to bring more in-house
• How do you make a vision come alive? Put the right organisation structure in place, get key teams on the bandwagon. Biggest challenge is doing this with limited budget

J&J, Juan-Jose Gonzales, MD Northern Europe. Johnson &Johnson

• J&J are an old client of mine from my time at Microsoft and I have fond memories of presenting at their global country managers meeting in Marbella to over 300 folks several years ago. Their portfolio includes several iconic brands like Neutrogena, Listerine and Acuvue
• Their story starts in 2008 when they lost 10% gross profit due to a depreciating £
• This gave them a strict cost-focus and emphasis on digital
• Then asked how many websites they had, the answer was unclear!
• Juan-Jose outlines the key elements for the digital journey: (These are exceptional good to hear advocated as JaffeBlend specialises in helping with points 1-5)

1. Training (!!): 24 mandatory training a year and 36 best practice sharing activities email, video. You build a very sophisticated level of IQ if you do this over 4 years
2. Infrastructure: there has to be a team looking at next gen technology, implications of social and mobile e.g. they realised that the legal team was not sufficient to deal with volume of contracts
3. Processes: the way they deal with communications briefs etc.
4. External Partners: they were not convinced that existing partners were in a position to support with new IQ
5. Targets: get idea to start spending up to 30% - they also looked at metrics, analytics, ROI to actually calculate the value of the move into digital
6. Leadership: very little can be achieved without this. Leadership= personal commitment. This is done by asking the right questions e.g. asking a particular question that can only be answered with Google Analytics or giving the order to reduce all media spend except digital. How do you personally embrace this as a leader? Do you sit together in a training?

• J&J have a global digital centre of excellence doing a yearly audit. 
• Current digital spend has gone from 4% to 22%.
• In 2011 they asked moms to share videos for Calpol which generated 100k likes and 24,000 submissions, Mouth vs. Life campaign for Listerine received 2.5 M channel views (300% more views in less time than Pepto Bismol).
• 2013 will see more relationships and e commerce development. 

Andy Bird then wrapped up the final part with 3 imperatives:

1. Integrate all drivers of capability

  

2. Inspire and enable behaviour change

3. Provide customer-focussed leadership 

Last, but not least, was a profound and moving session by Eric Whitacre on the Virtual Choir. This is a global choir to a piece of music composed and conducted by him, incorporated submissions via YouTube. The latest choir as more than 4,000 participants from all over the world. This is a moving example of social media collaboration producing not just beautiful music, but also helping talented music lovers to connect across the world giving them a sense of fulfilment and intimacy. I strongly urge you to watch some of these videos

I hope you've found some value in this post with highlights of the session. Thanks to Google for being such a fabulous host and for helping to educate marketers (albeit about their own products)! Next week I'm off to some cherry-picked sessions at Adweek so watch this space!

 

JaffeBlend Wins Business Person of the Year 2013 Award!

Hot off the press, yesterday I was honoured and privileged to attend the TrainE-TrainE Business Awards lunch, attended by 350-400 people in the magnificent ballroom of the Grosvener Hotel on Park Lane. Let me start by saying that I find it hard to do any form of self-promotion, but am so overjoyed with this award, I do intend to put that aside and shout the news from the rooftops (so please bear with me and share in my jubilation!).

And the winner is .... JaffeBlend! In true social media style, the clip was up on YouTube before I even got back to my table. http://bit.ly/ULzviG

The event began with a drinks reception, at which I had an exhibition table.

This was the debut also of the new JaffeBlend branding, the launch of the brochure and the free "99 Social Media Facts You Need to Know About" booklet.
Please email Sharon for copies as well as the JaffeBlend original jelly beans! I will be making a digital version available via the site very soon.

Then off we headed to the ballroom where the magnificent reception began. Check out the stylish starter which awaited us.

Finally it was Awards time, thank heavens completed before the main course since my stomach was doing somersaults and backflips from nerves. The Business Person of the Year Award 2013 was up first and massive thanks to Jonathan Sumberg for the professionally edited clip of me. Some folks told me they thought I should win based on the video alone (!). I highly recommend Jonathan's video services!

More pictures will be available soon, but in the meantime, here is what the ballroom looked like and the moment I took the stage.

A big thank you to all my friends, clients and colleagues for the support over years across multiple companies and multiple markets. I'm glad to have had you all along with me for the fast-paced bullet-train digital ride. We have had a blast being part of changing the world.

Looking forward to bigger and better things from JaffeBlend.

The best is yet to come!

Life *IS* just like a box of chocolates!

After my last horrendous customer service experience (The Kooples), I had a fabulous experience with Charbonnel et Walker this week.

This is a premium chocolate brand and I purchased a box of chocs for my husband. To our dismay, there were 2 chocolates missing (see picture).

I called the store a few days later at 4 pm and here's what happened:
- I was trusted immediately. This is huge as I almost didn't call expecting to have to reproduce a receipt which I no longer had. What a relief to actually experience "the customer is always right"!
- I was apologised to with an explanation
- I was offered a replacement box which was posted the same day and arrived 8 am the next morning.

The best part of this experience is that my expectations were exceeded turning me from a good customer to a disappointed customer (missing chocolates) to a fan (and now via this blog post, an advocate!)

This is how marketing should be done, folks. Amen.

Google Zeitgeist 2012

I just returned from attending my third Google Zeitgeist. This event is simply phenomenal on every level: the content, the speakers, the attendees, the entertainment and the food!

For those of you unable to attend, I've attempted to summarise the key points in this blogpost (with maximum fact and minimum personal opinion ;-). Where detail is thin, I do apologise – I was tweeting, working or networking.

The evening before was kicked off by a Welcome Reception with a range of cuisine from Japanese to BBQ offered in various rooms at The Grove Hotel, Hertfordshire. There was a Heston Blumenthal-esque theme to the event with a scientific room of experiments to create drinks and the most creative desserts I've ever witnessed!

• Imagine a 'toothbrush' consisting of a long biscuit with a selection of flavoured pastes (chocolate anyone?) to squeeze on top from toothpaste tube.
• The other highlight was a chocolate bar involving the selection of a type of chocolate and then biscuit, to then be inserted inside the chocolate like sim card!
• Finally, I found the gadget I'm missing from my kitchen. The reverse grill – which is frozen to -44 C and can create instant ice-cream. Now where will I find the space in my kitchen?!

There were other exciting ancillary events such as a cooking workshop and running club by Dean Karnazes (who I embarrassingly assumed was just the 'running instructor' until he was invited up on stage on Day 2).

Day 1

As top business leaders were gathered in one room, the day kicked off with Nikesh Arora (Google SVP) announcing that this was the "Women's Zeitgeist" attended by the top 50 women in Europe. The power of social media immediately kicked in as I tweeted this, and was then retweeted by Nikesh himself to nearly 12,000 followers.

hroughout the 2 days there was lots of emotion and humour around Chelsea's win over Bayern Munich – nothing like some good inter-country competitiveness to remind us that even top businesspeople are human too.

Beyond the Euro Crisis

Niall Fergusan (Historian) kicked off the first session of the day with an economic history lesson enlightening us that about 12 European governments gave fallen since the inception of the EU. He compared the current global economic crisis to the last 2 depressions and gave his advice for using the past to learn from the future. He reminded us that the whole point of creating a monetary unit was to get Europeans into a federal economic system.

George Papandreou (ex Prime Minster Greece) then followed off with a pro-Greece PR speech and myth debunking. Check out the video here.

• Myth 1: Debt is a symptom rather than a cause. The cause is a badly managed country that has lost competitiveness.
• Myth 2: Greeks are the problem but it's a European problem. It is a precedent of the European structure, showing some of the missing links in the euro
• Myth 3: Greeks are not lazy!

Regarding the third myth, Niall Fergusan commented that the Germans work the least hours out of every other nation which is why when you go in vacation – the Germans are already there! :-)

Stephanie Flanders (BBC Economics Editor) moderated the discussion and question if Greece should never have joined the Euro.

Next up were Jim O'Neill (senior exec Goldman Sachs) & Diana Farrell (McKinsey). Jim was very optimistic and commented that 'the world isn't falling apart' as he sees lots of improvement and positivity. You will always get volatility when you join 17 countries together who are different. He then quoted various positive stats such as 20% of apple revenues per quarter are from China and Germany having a record low unemployment as a result of large production of cars for China.

Finally, Sir Martin Sorrell (CEO WPP) closed with his views that this is a process of readjustment - it's simply a cycle. Since politicians are in the business of getting re-elected and elections are very frequent, it's no wonder they have such a short term view whereas we in business must take the long term view. Sir Martin felt that the discussion was "depressing, distracting and off strategy" and pointed to China, the 2^nd largest economy in the world, and the changes and impact happening there.

Beyond the Rational - moderated by Jon Snow

This session was moderated by Jon Snow (Channel 4 News Presenter) and the first topic was kicked off by Professor Dan Ariely (Professor Economics and Behavioural Economics, Duke University). He spoke about the many experiments into people cheating. Watch the clip here.

• The best time to cheat is actually on the way to confession as people 'reset' at confession though they generally do continue to cheat. He suggested that confession should be broader than simply religious e.g. banks and politicians should ask forgiveness.
• Since the conference is attended by more women than before, it was interesting when the discussion turned to the big difference between men and women in how they view competition e.g. men enter competitions regardless of skill and women don't enter at all.
• He said that people ingested in technology have to be optimistic as technology is about fixing the things that we do badly

Laurie Santos (Assoc. Director Psychology – Yale) talked about her work with monkeys to better understand human. For example, monkeys can learn to use currency and operate a market with risk, discounts etc. that exactly replicates human markets. I'm left wondering if monkeys are super intelligent or if we human just have the intelligence of monkeys …? Watch the clip here.

Matt Ridley (Author and Economist) also talked about optimism and mentioned that child mortality has fallen in Africa by 5%. He cited lots of other optimistic facts (faster than I could type) but I did pock up that there is less equality, the poor getting richer faster than the rich getting richer. Watch the clip here.

The session ended with a beautiful performance by Imogen Heap (who I had never heard of) who reminded us all to breath (ironically she was rather out of breath from being quite nervous!). Watch the performance here.

Google Product Showcase

David Rowan (Editor Wired Magazine) tweeted (@iRowan) some interesting Google facts, which is always good for a room full of folks who love numbers!

• Google activates 850,000 Android devices a day - more than the number of babies born
• Google has conducted 58,000 search experiments in the last year that have resulted in 520 changes to search
• Every minute 60 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube - 50% up year on year

First up was Google Drive, impressively allowing 2 people on different sides of the world to work on the same document in real time. There was a voice to text demo which unfortunately went completely wrong much to the amusement of the audience. Drive can search for pictures by name and recognise content, e.g. pictures of bridges, which can be very useful for searching through thousands of holiday photos. They've also put translation technology into docs.

Next up was Google Plus (Google's fastest growing product), now with 170 million people, although I wonder if these are registered users or active users. The demonstration covered a joint conference call and how to start a 'hangout' even if one user doesn't have a smartphone.

The biggest Search Enhancements included "the knowledge graph" which shows a panel with a range of information surrounding a potentially broad search term (e.g. London) and highlights of pages (+1) endorsed by Google+ friends.

On the YouTube video front, there was head-to-head Apple combat showing the ability to bookmark videos to "view later" and then watch on your phone. They demonstrated how the phone can seamlessly communicate and sling content between PC-phone-TV.

Some 'really cool' Android features were demonstrated such as:

• Unlocking your phone with face recognition, panorama photos and fun video calling effects.
• Transfer of tabs from Chrome browser between PC and phone allowing a continuous browsing experience.
• The NFC chip (also shown last year) was demonstrated allowing you to send information between phones by placing phones on top of one another

We were also shown some mapping picture technology demonstrating an exact location for where a picture is taken, and the ability to follow to visual path on a map as if 'flying'. This is great for folks who struggle to read maps (or the Google Product Manager who demonstrated whose boyfriend lost his backback on the Swiss Alps and needed to relocate it).

The best was left for last as we were shown Google Glasses. A great idea about glasses with integrated voice controlled commands and screen integrating music, maps, information and communication. Check out g.co/projectglass for more. Despite my love of gadgets, I can't see myself ever wearing one of these.

I unfortunately missed the next session on Beyond the Revolution but the interesting anecdote here I picked up was that non-violent protests are twice more likely to succeed. Here are links to the missed clips:

• Moderator: Paul Mason (Economics Editor BBC Newsnight)
• Bernard Kouchner (Founder Doctors without Borders). Watch the clip here.
• Farah Pandith (Special rep to Muslim Communities, US State dept). Watch the clip here.
• Srdja Popovic (Exec Director, Canvas Serbia). Watch the clip here.
• Bassem Youssef (Surgeon & TV Presenter). Watch the clip here.

Beyond Ourselves

This session was moderated by Becky Anderson (CNN).

Lily Cole (Supermodel and Founder of Impossible.com) and Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) discussed the interesting topic of gifting economies. Here are some key points:

• Gifting economies tap into sociological behaviours and technology makes connections transparent. Wikipedia is the biggest example of this as people donate hours of their time because they find it interesting
• Impossible.com (still in Beta) builds on people's desire to have a sense of community, to meet one another and help one another (as does the social media phenomenon). Lily mentioned how gift parading or the economy of regard (gift economy) is worth more than GDP (UK?)
• Jimmy said how the most successful business don't necessarily set out to make money. He cited Mark Zuckerberg who is apparently obsessed with the product.

This is definitely a very interesting concept (and quite change to champagne and catwalks) proving that Lily Cole is clearly a highly intelligent woman! Watch the clip here.

The unforgettable Dame Viviane Westwood followed, talking unstoppably and passionately about climate change. Calling herself a 'freedom fighter', she talked about the financial problem being the symptom and not the cause of the problem. She criticised our current culture of 'consumerism' and praised art as its' not consumption. Unfortunately government are the last to do anything to save the environment so its up to the corporate world to lead change. It would only cost £114 million to save 3 forests…. While many remarked on her monologue, I felt she had a very valuable message for our current materialistic and superficial society where celebrities are the new religion and appearance is the new currency. Watch the clip here.

David Jones (Global CEO Havas & Founder One Young World) talked about One Young World competition and introduced 3 young entrepreneurial candidates which impressive achievements. Watch the clip here.

• Finalist of the Google Science Fair is 16 year old girl from India, Harine Ravichandiran, who came up with a solution for stable voltage for remote villages as her grandparents had to wake up at 3 a.m. for enough light to water their crops.
• Amr Mohamed, Global Winner YouTube Space Lab, came up with an experiment investigating the effects of microgravity on the way the zebra spider catches its prey and whether it could adapt its behavior in this environment.  
• Joe Mwale, 16 year old Kenyan boy who started a water purification business from his bed, while sick with dysentery. To raise $5k, he structured a 5 year lease for a piece of unused land in his family. He has sold 2,000 bottles to date.

The conference day ended with Nobel prize winning Annie Lennox, who brought people to tears with her passionate plight to help pregnant woman with AIDS/HIV in Africa. Her talk was so moving that there were people crying in the audience.

Here are some key points:

• 14 million orphans affected by aids across the whole continent
• If children are born with the virus they most likely won't reach their 5th birthday – it's heartbreaking
• Currently there are 34 million people living with HIV, 23 million of these are in Africa
• There are not enough doctors and nurses per 1,000 people when compared to more developed countries e.g. UK
• When she visited Africa, coffins of every size were being sold at supermarkets. She saw tents everywhere, which she thought were for celebrations but in fact they were funerals.

Watch the clip here.

I chatted to her at the dinner and she mentioned that Jakob Zuma was a strong supporter of the programme (whereas Thabo Mbeki had made things extremely tough with his denial that HIV leads to AIDS. She is truly a remarkable woman and I praised her for lending her name and time to a cause that simply isn't sensational enough to warrant media attention, and therefore global attention.

Day turned to Night and the Drinks and Dinner commenced in a spectacular white tent in the Grove's Walled Garden. The décor this year was light, bright and contemporary. The food and entertainment were spectacular with tremendous style and attention to detail. There were performances by Maria Aragon (12 year old internet sensation with 55+ million YouTube views), Paloma Faith and Ed Sheeran. The alcohol fuelled a whole different level of conversation and networking.;-)

The picture below shows Annie Lennox taking a video of one of the performances (and shows the proximity I was sitting to her). The second picture shows the starter 'scientific style' with tube of mayonnaise and test tube vial of olive oil.

 

Day 2

Going Beyond

This session was moderated by Clare Balding (BBC Sports Presenter).

Sir Ranulph Fiennes kicked off with a profoundly laugh-out-loud funny and borderline unbelievable presentation of his expeditions and their challenges. I've heard him speak before, and yet this time it was even more insightful, inspiring and funny ranging from surviving temperatures up to -132 C to surviving fires, frostbite and blisters. I highly recommend watching the clip here. I since also read that he has also run 7 marathons in 7 days (although that pales to what Dean Karnazes achieved).

Sir Steve Redgrave, an Olympic gold medallist talked about his experiences and the training process to reduce 1/100^th of a second. He touched on the importance of mental performance for physical performance i.e. mental process is to believe you will win so even if they are leading, they are hurting. Watch the clip here.

He was then followed by John Eales, international rugby quarterback who talked about the challenge of team performance versus individual performance. Watch the clip here.

Finally, Dean Karnazes came on stage. He has run 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states starting from deciding to run 30 miles one night when he was drunk (!). I nearly fell off my chair as I had chatted to him that morning and mistakenly assumed he was just the running club 'instructor' as our paths collided on the morning run. I was impressed by a gadget he mentioned and later chatted to him about it – check out the MotoACTV. It's a watch linked to a Jawbone earpiece measuring biometric body information during the run which is then uploaded via Bluetooth. Watch the clip here.

Beyond the News

Evgeny Lebedev (Owner of The Evening Standard) kicked off his strategy for his titles. He talked about his youth in Russia as a key driver for his business achievements today. He interestingly mentioned that his strategy for The Independent is to 'lose less money' and perhaps the losses to be funded by The Evening Standard's profit. Watch the clip here.

Joris Luyendijk (Middle East correspondent and banking blogger with The Guardian) came on next with an honest and charismatic style. He raised the valid point how can we expect bankers to have a long term view when they can be fired in 5 minutes! I just love the Dutch! Watch the clip here.

Ahmed Shihab-Eldin (host and producer Huffington Post Streaming Network) discussed how social media is the catalyst for change as elimated the use of parachute journalism by offering a new source of publishing. While reading from his Ipad (!), he told the audience about the new streaming network, which now has more page views than the NY times! The social media change is youth led as 70% of the Arab world is under 30 years (50% rest of world). Google assisted the social media revolution when it launched "speak to tweet" allowing voicemails to be transferred into tweets. Watch the clip here.

Paul Conroy (award-winning photo journalist who was with Marie Colvin when she died) concluded the panel. He recounted the shocking events included his dramatic escape after the bombing that killed Marie. It's phenomenal the strength he has shown and it really brings the reality of the tragic story to life hearing it first hand from Paul. Watch the clip here.

Beyond Today

This session kicked off with futuristic insights giving yet another new and enthralling dimension to the 2-day conference.

First up was Marc Raibert (Boston Robotics) talking about his experiments creating Robots which can run ("Why walk when you can run?"). He showed us clips of Big Dog and Bigger Dog, with humorous demonstrations of house these robot dogs can avoid falling (and sometimes fall miserably). These robotics are already being used for purposes in the military for example with chemical suit testing. Watch the clip here.

Catherine Mohr (Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical) presented to us the usage of robotics in hospitals to reduce recovery time and complications and save costs despite the large upfront cost (as long incisions are eliminated). She demonstrated the cost benefit analysis of high upfront costs versus savings in hospital expansions due to lower bed occupancy (as a result of the significantly shorter recovery times). Amazing how technology in the healthcare sector has such significant financial implications (rather than simply giving patients easier solutions). Watch the clip here.

Mikko Hyponnen (Chief Research Officer for F-Secure) enlightened us on cybercrime. He explained that the criminals are best grouped into 3 categories based on their intent: thieves, activists and governments. He went into detail on each of the categories – especially interesting was Governments as he isolated a clip from a Chinese video showing software which showed they conduct cyber-attacks on the US! Watch the clip here.

Marco Tempests (Cyber illusionist) did a show for us showing showing magic using technology and talking about the art of illusion, turning belief into disbelief. Watch the clip here.

Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO x-Prize foundation, talked about Abundance. He's written a book on the topic, which I looked forward to reading (we all received a copy). He explained how we are heading towards a world of abundance as technology turns scarcity into abundance. Watch the clip here.

Larry Paige, who needs no introduction, came on stage next with his Google Goggles. He talked about how, for many people now, their first phone will be their first computer! Here are some key points from his talk:

• They have made google products much more coherent and visually better (like a little company called Apple?) – "technology should do the hard work for you rare than you doing the hard work"
• People seem confused by Google Plus but it essentially allows people to share things
• You can now take a photo on your android phone and have it shared automatically
• Search has gotten a lot better but you don't always see it though it changes every day. Last week they released knowledge panels
• You can have same tabs open on phone as on desktop providing a seamless experience
• Big bets: their aim to have people use a product as often as they use their toothbrush
• YouTube has been doubling revenue YOY since acquisition for $1.4 billion

Larry has always been motivated by a slogan from a summer university course which said "have a healthy disregard for the impossible" i.e. be very ambitious such as Google's project for self-driving cars. You won't have any competition and you will attract the best people who only want to work on innovative things

He is very excited about the concept of carrying around your health data and data mining based on the data coming out of your body then figuring out why you are getting sick. Watch the clip here.

 

Beyond Philanthropy

The piste de resistance was of course, ex-President Bill Clinton, who came on stage looking old and frail (and in his eighties). I confess to immediately Googling his age which was a mere 65 years. Just proof that being a president ages significantly! Not meaning to appear shallow here, but some folks I chatted to afterwards said the same thing. He unfortunately did not appear to be in good health.

He was interviewed by none other than Eric Schmidt (Chairman, Google) no less.

Here are some of the key points from his talk:

• He chatted briefly about wanting South East Europe to join the EU (especially Turkey) which could be a bridge to Arab Spring. In his opinion, the best way of managing the Arab Spring is not to manage it!
• He went into detail of the EU and Euro problem showing a tremendously sharp brain for economics and still being quite passionate and a strong public speaker in this area
• Then he talked about the Clinton Foundation and his current work (which I was not aware of at all – I just thought he worked the speaker's circuit for a nice retirement fund as I think Tony Blair does (or I could be wrong here). It's quite impressive and you can read more about it here.
• The foundation is:
  • A global initiative
  • Its affiliates look at global networks of cooperation
  • Instrumental in fighting childhood obesity, HIV/AIDS and Malaria
  • Biggest impact has been in healthcare industry, getting HIVAIDS drugs reduced from $900 to $90
  • Got a 88% calorie reduction in drinks at schools
  • Costa Rica's over capital income is 2.5 x its neighbours because it has a green sustainable economy using hydroelectricity
  • Creative cooperative collaboration helped bring down the shoe bomber as all intelligence services between the US and UK collaborated with one another

His appearance went down well (even before he spoke as he achieved a jam-packed room and sell out dinner that evening). In previous years, Zeitgeist had emptied out by the end of the second day, showing clever organisation by the Google Zeitgeist event team. This proves the power of his charisma despite the fact that he's the only US president in history for being impeached for lying under oath (this was conveniently omitted from the session).

Watch the clip here.

With a wrap up by Nikesh, the event concluded. I'm told the Zeitgeist event team now have about a 3 month break before they begin planning again for Zeitgeist 2013. I certainly look forward to next year!

 

Boobs, the Customer Life Cycle and Old Stock

One of the areas of marketing I was and am always so passionate about is the Customer Life Cycle. Why? Because it just makes sense from the perspective of companies/brands/products building RELATIONSHIPS with customers rather than making things that sell.

One such company who do it well are Rigby and Peller.

 

On the purchase of breastfeeding bra's, you get a discount for your first purchase of "normal" bra's. Someone, somewhere figured out that eventually women stop breastfeeding, and since the shape of their breasts change (sorry if this comes as a shock to you), they need new bra's. Useful for the customer and for Rigby and Peller, Kerrrching!

Alas, I was disappointed when buying some underwear there today. I had 3 panties (or briefs or knickers depending which word you use in your country) and each were priced differently: 17.95, 19.95 and 21.95. WHAT?? When I discovered this, I asked the sales lady who seemed just as mystified as me. She checked with the manager, who sheepishly explained that "old stock was priced lower and new stock was subject to the stronger Euro"). I'm sorry, but when did your stock issues become MY problem? If they were really smart they would have:

- offered me all 3 for the price of the lowest and admitted that you simply cannot price the same product in 3 different ways AND

- re-pricing all stock at the higher price and increasing overall margins

A company simply should not expect a customer to pay 3 different prices for the same commodity. Currency fluctuations and inventory are NOT the customer's problem and retailers should not expose their clientele to this. 

A final digital note: while R & P are well ranked in Google, if you type the name in with any variations e.g. "Pellar" instead of "Peller" or with ".co.uk" instead of ".com" you do NOT get redirected. Surely companies should be anticipating typo's and claiming these URL's? Or am I the only dumb cluck who doesn't immediately always use Google....? 

JaffeJuice #126 & Bob Garfield

Listening to JaffeJuice interview Bob Garfield on his podcast right now, and while I'm only half way through the podcast, I wanted to recommend this interview while it's fresh in my mind. Since many international (non Ad-Age) readers are not familiar with Bob, his views are refreshing and a good wake-up call for all marketers and folks in the advertising and media industries. I love the reference to the old yin and yang in marketing and media, where content was provided for free in exchange for advertising however this relied on content being limited in supply - which is NO LONGER the case. Furthermore, while our generation accepts the interruption model to receive free content, the younger generation simply finds it annoying and unacceptable. While many have held this point of view, I have also preached it in my keynotes and recent "Future of Digital" project for Microsoft, it's comforting to hear industry thought leaders like Bob and Joseph give greater insight on the "revolution" and sum it up so succintly. It's one thing to provide answers, but it's another to do it in a way that makes people listen. Thanks Bob and Joe for shaking things up! p.s. I obviously feel passionate about this topic, as I typed this post with one finger on my iPhone and now have a finger cramp...

How do you like them Apples?

On arrival at JFK last week, a cute Basset hound let out a not-so-cute bark at my suitcase and I then had 2 delicious pink lady apples confiscated from me at US customs. I was relieved I wasn’t fined as I’d heard of Gwyneth Paltrow apparently getting some ridiculous fine for being caught with a banana in her handbag.

2 Apples down, I then hopped in a cab to the big Apple and replenished my stock after checking into my hotel. The next and final Apple to conquer was the Apple Store. WOW.

As I descended the staircase at the 5^th Ave store, I didn’t know where to look first and just took in the buzz of the whole store. I’ve been in the Soho store as well as the London store, however this one was just so impressive due to its size and layout. I really felt like I was descending into the world of Apple. Equally impressive was what looked like 1 assistant per customer (ok, not exactly, but there were loads and loads of store assistants with bright t-shirts available to help). A friendly fella helped me out when I asked where the checkout was by letting me know that he could facilitate the sale THERE and THEN! With his handheld, he scanned the products, my receipt was emailed to me and he pulled out a plastic bag from his back pocket. WOW again. Well done Mr. Jobs for making it a pleasant experience to give you my money. I love the “proof of the pudding” in this experience seeing the product features of “ease-of-use” and “simplicity” extended to the in-store purchase experience.

Apologies in advance for all my Apple adoration which will be flowing abundantly in the next few weeks as I’ve just purchased my first Macbook. I’m sure I’m not the only one drinking the apple-flavoured Kool-Aid judging by the iphones and white earphones across the globe. ;-)